Tag Archive: hardcover

Though I knew it was coming, it was still a pleasant surprise to receive this package in Thursday’s mail. Thanks, Pyr!

The physical copies of Quantum Coin are even more beautiful than I thought they would be. This was the first time I saw the whole jacket, and Jackie Nasso Cooke did another phenomenal job with the design. Pyr even managed to fit in a back cover blurb from the fantastic four-star review from RT Book Reviews, as well as many great blurbs for Fair Coin. (You can still enter a giveaway at Goodreads through Monday to win two of the books from that very box. I’ll even throw in some Styrofoam peanuts. And don’t miss the other giveaways in the sidebar to the right!)

I still find it incredible that I wrote and published those two novels. Don’t they look nice together? Sam Weber’s cover illustrations complement each other perfectly while showing a progression that mirrors the themes in the books.

I think they look even better side by side on my bookshelf. And maybe on yours? :)

Pardon the radio silence around here lately. The quirks of publishing schedules often means that while you’re promoting your first book, you’re also working under a deadline on the second one. Lots of great things have been going on with Fair Coin in the last few weeks, but I had to shift gears and focus on revising Quantum Coin. (More on that later.) Fittingly, I turned in the manuscript to my editor on Leap Day–on schedule–and now I can start catching up on everything I’ve had to shove aside in the meantime. So much to do.

The biggest news is that even though the print and electronic publication date for Fair Coin is March 6th (less than a week!), some lucky folks have already received their pre-orders and you can even find it in some Barnes & Nobles stores right now. Thank you to everyone who has already picked it up and said kind words about it or sent me pictures of themselves with my book. This is already such an incredible experience for me, the best of my writing career so far. Reviews are starting to roll in, and so far I couldn’t be happier with the response. I’ll share some of those reviews and interviews here in the next few days and weeks, but if you’re curious, please drop in on the book’s Facebook page for the latest updates, and take a moment to like it: http://www.facebook.com/flipthecoin

To make publication day even more of an event, I’m hosting another giveaway on Goodreads as a kind of countdown to March 6. The prize for two randomly selected winners is a signed hardcover of Fair Coin. Click on over and enter. Tell your friends and enemies!

And in case you’ve missed it, here’s the book trailer what I made for Fair Coin. I had a lot of fun putting it together, and it came out almost exactly the way I had imagined. (Even if it took more work than I’d imagined.) I’m not sure how effective book trailers are, even though I have a little side business editing them, but I think they work best when they tease the book without showing readers too much. What do you think of this one or book trailers in general? Do they influence your decision to check out a book at all?

As you can tell from the ongoing giveaway at Goodreads, I recently received some Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) of Fair Coin. These are bound paperbacks that resemble the final book but contain uncorrected text. Typos, even. (I hates them, Preciousss.) What are ARCs for? Essentially, they’re for promoting your new book. My amazing publicist at Pyr has been sending them to book reviewers and bloggers, and the copies I received are earmarked for promotions and for booksellers, librarians, and reviewers I hope will be interested in it.

I wasn’t as emotional as I expected when I opened the package–I pretty much only cry at Pixar movies these days–but it was definitely a Big Deal. I was excited to get an ARC because it’s like a prototype of the book to come, another step that makes it feel like more of a reality. In fact, no sooner did I prepare to post a goofy picture of me posing with an ARC, but the actual, hardcover author copies arrived! A month early!

I know, that’s not my book. I’m glad you noticed.

But see, my idea of what it’s like to unbox the shiny new copies of your first book has basically been informed by Back to the Future. What? I love that movie. My moment was more like this:

Let’s just pretend that Bach is more interested in my book than playing with those Styrofoam peanuts.

When I opened the box and took out the copy on top, I only glanced at it before handing it to my wife. I took another copy from the box and looked it over thoroughly, even lifting the jacket to peek at the bare hardcover beneath it. (She was fine with that, and a little curious herself.)

I didn’t even think about letting my wife see the book first; she was the first person to read and critique that messy early draft of Fair Coin. This was her moment too. I think I said something like, “We did it.” That’s when I realized that opening that box wasn’t just about the achievement of getting a book published, it was about who I can share it with: the family and friends and everyone who helped make it happen. That’s a lot of people. I should have felt proud, but instead I was simply… Grateful.

And I also kept thinking about that scene in the greatest time travel movie ever made, in which a happy ending features a writer surrounded by his family (and Biff), holding his first science fiction novel.

Thanks, McFly.

(I look tired, don’t I? I guess “If you put your mind to it, and skip a lot of sleep, you can accomplish almost anything, probably” is a weaker theme for a movie.)